Lonestar Data Holdings successfully conducted its final data center test on Intuitive Machines' lunar lander mission IM-1.
The company transmitted the Declaration of Independence from the Earth to the Moon, along with a copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and data for the State of Florida.
Lonestar also sent a copy of the Declaration of Independence to the Odysseus lander during the trip through space and again in cislunar orbit, with the three tests seen as early steps to proving the concept of a lunar data center. A follow-up mission, also with Intuitive Machines, will include a small lunar data center deployment.
That mission, known as IM-2, will feature an 8TB SSD and a single Microchip PolaFire SoC FPGA. It will be Lonestar's first lunar data center, and the company will use it to further test the concept and see how storage behaves on the surface.
The date of the IM-2 mission has yet to be announced, with the lander likely to be adapted to take into account issues with the IM-1 mission.
The vehicle's navigation lasers were never switched on before launch, but the lander fortunately included a prototype laser navigation system as one of its NASA science payloads. Intuitive Machines were able to switch over to it and land on the Moon's surface - the first commercial spacecraft ever to pull off the feat, and the first US spacecraft to manage it since 1972.
But Intuitive Machines later discovered that the lander had tipped over, hampering its communication abilities and leaving its solar panels closer to the ground than expected.
The lander is expected to power down soon, but was still able to gather data and send and receive some data - including Lonestar's mission.
"For us, this has been an incredible unparalleled commercial success," Lonestar’s CEO, Chris Stott, said.
"Teamwork is everything. Intuitive Machines' successful landing has now helped us to establish a whole new sector in the global disaster recovery market while enabling true new commerce from the Moon. We are grateful to the Intuitive Machines team who showed ingenuity and grit in seeing the mission through and making it a tremendous success. They really came through for us."
